


breeding lilacs out of the dead land

by Cerberusia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:09:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How could I forget?</p>
            </blockquote>





	breeding lilacs out of the dead land

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Christmas round of and beta-ed by Becky, as always ♥. Contains moral ambiguity, incest and dub-con, so probably not for those of a sensitive disposition; also gratuitous Classical references, because that's how I roll. _Canis domesticus_ is of course the common domesticated dog, _therion_ is beast and the star Regulus is also known as Alpha Leonis, found at the heart of the constellation of Leo. _Eromenos_ is the Classical Greek term for the younger partner in a paederastic relationship - [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece) has a lot more pertinent (and fascinating!) information if you're interested.

When you get out of Azkaban, what you don't tell anyone is that you can't remember.

They didn't explain it to you before they locked you away, probably because so few people get out of Azkaban to realise that huge chunks of their memory are missing. Of course everyone knows about having the happiness sucked out of you, but it had never really occurred to you that that meant literally losing the happy memories - not just the emotion, but the actual sequence of events.

For instance, you can barely remember James. You know that you were best friends - cold comfort now that he's dead - but all those moments of friendship, of laughter, are gone. You remember the times you argued, and some of your more serious conversations, but nothing that might bring a smile to your face. The same for Remus and - Wormtail. You know that Snape and you were enemies and remember some of your confrontations - but they're all the ones in which you came off worse. That's why so many Azkaban inmates end up killing themselves: bereft of joyful memories, they are forced to relentlessly brood on their failures.

Then there are neutral, useless memories. You can recite the family tree seven generations back before you start getting confused, which always used to upset Mother who insisted that you had to know at least ten. You vaguely remember Uncle Alphard, who by his indistinctness must have been the only nice member of the family, whom you can otherwise remember with distressing clarity. You know that he used to have a little brother.

Oh, you remember Regulus very clearly indeed. He'd looked so much like you, just a little - less. Shorter, smaller, frailer, with curly hair (a trait not seen in the Black family for generations) and fine, delicate features. Pretty next to his handsome older brother (you run raw hands over your battered face and think, _not any more_ ). Very shy, although not with you once he got over his childhood hero-worship - and he did that quickly. Memories of a dozen fights seep into your mind - _what's wrong with you_ Regulus stood over your bed, _why don't you listen to Mother_ Regulus' fingers on your wrist, _why don't you listen to **me**_ \- and the memory cuts out, though you can't imagine why: fights are supposed to be negative memories. Unless you gave the little bastard what-for, though you can't imagine you did. You think you were always a little soft on Regulus.

In Azkaban, all your senses become dulled. You gradually stop tasting the food, seeing the walls or hearing the shriek of the gulls. After a while, you stop even feeling pain. Your vibrant emotions, your sense of outrage becomes blunt. There's nothing left to care about. After a while, you stop thinking about anything at all.

Then of course you see the newspaper, Pettigrew, Wormtail, _traitor_ , and suddenly you have a purpose again. Your professors used to say that you'd be brilliant if you just applied yourself, and apply yourself you do. Across sea and land, propelled by hate and righteous fury; you catch sight of yourself in puddles and see the Grim staring back at you with venom-yellow eyes. You feel no fear, just bitter satisfaction.

For those months, well nigh a year, you think of nothing but revenge. Your dreams are filled with smoke and screams and hands missing one finger. You welcome it: there is no room for tenderness in the heart of an avenger. In the haze before sleep, you mix Greek and Latin, learnt too long ago: not _canis domesticus_ , but _therion_.

Remus restores you, of course. Remus, the dependable one, the sensible one, a therion just like you by the full light of the moon. He knows what it is to lose one's senses to the beast. He embraces you, and you are human again.

Later, after the shouting and cursing and furious injustice, you have a lot of time to think. Your anger cools, is transmuted into poisonous calm. You will cleanse this rotten world. With your ruined hands, you will.

In the meantime, you think of Regulus. Regulus, never quite as luminous as you, died a little over a year before you were imprisoned. You couldn't bury him, of course: you would have stolen James' Cloak and gone to the funeral, but it was held down in the vaults of the house and you knew you couldn't get past the wards. Instead you lit a candle in your small flat, and watched it until it burnt down.

You have this memory: Regulus, his face turned away, rising from the marble claw-footed tub, pale skin barely flushed. Milky blue water splashes onto the black tile. His hair drips to form rivers down his back, collecting in the small of his back and the hollows behind his knees. He turns as if to face you, and you see pale parted lips before the memory slips away again.

You also have memories like this: Regulus on his bed - it was always his, never yours - stretching himself with slick fingers under your instruction. His face is red with shame. You liked that, you remember: you liked making him cry and beg and humiliate himself. In hindsight, you were in fact the sadist that Snape so often accused you of being. You'd always thought it was fair to be cruel to Regulus, snivelling little Reggie who seemed to diminish rather than grow as the years went by until he was a thin, pale shadow with dark smudges under his eyes set hollow in his face. You found him as utterly contemptible as you now find yourself.

To the family, your rationale was this: if you yourself had been Uncle Alphard's _eromenos_ , why should Regulus not be yours? Mother was always telling you to set a good example for your juniors, and this teaching method has been practiced among Pureblood families for generations.

Back when you called this place home, you used to clamber up to the roof to sit and smoke Muggle cigarettes. It's even more dangerous now than it was then, but you do it anyway. You've done far worse and survived.

You haven't smoked in years - strangely enough they don't give you pleasures like tobacco in Azkaban - and can't really be bothered to start again now. Instead you lean back on your elbows against the gable and watch your breath coalesce in the cold night air. It makes you think of the bike - what did happen to that old thing? You suppose Hagrid probably still has it. You'll probably never get it back.

You fucked Regulus over that bike. You weren't supposed to penetrate him, but you did it anyway. Regulus made noises like weeping and turned his face away. You loved it.

Maybe, you think, you have always been a therion really.

You wander round the house like a ghost, unable to make it a home again when Mother's portrait still shrieks at you from the wall when you come downstairs for breakfast. You can't sleep in your old room, déjà vu at every corner, so you sleep in Regulus' instead.

You pass a month this way, June into July. The dog days of summer are upon London, and in open defiance of the usual dismal British summer the temperature shoots up to nearly thirty degrees. You distract yourself from your depravity by inventing ingenious methods of keeping cool, but inevitably you remember snatches of the summer before your fifth year, which was even hotter than this one: how you licked along Regulus' pale throat while he closed his eyes and submitted himself. And you are distracted in turn from your Cooling Charms by the heavy blood-beat throb in your ears, in your cock, and when it's over you lie on the floor too disgusted with yourself to care about the heat.

Then, gradually, the memories come back.

They creep in slowly, like nervous cats expecting a kick. Gradually, you remember your life. Meeting James, the look on Remus' face after you became Animagi, the first time you saw Harry as a tot. You can rejoice in the remembered love of your friends once more: memories all the more precious because you cannot make new ones like them.

Most of all, you remember Regulus.

Again, you haul yourself up to the rooftop. Late evening, the air is cooler but still warmed to a bearable temperature by the lingering heat of the day. The moon is nearly full - Remus must be having a rough time of it. You half-hum, half-sing under your breath:

_The moon that lingered over London town  
Poor puzzled moon, he wore a frown  
How could he know we two were so in love  
The whole damn world seemed upside down?_

_The streets of town were paved with stars..._

You used to buy Muggle records and tapes and make Regulus listen to them. You had to fiddle with wards and magical fields _so much_ to make that one non-magical corner of your bedroom just to use the record player. You were into rock'n'roll - Slade, T-Rex, The Pistols - but Regulus preferred Nat King Cole and stuff from the 50s (also, inexplicably, Billy Joel). He used to love that song.

Regulus. You remember now.

Regulus, rising from the tub like Venus born from the seafoam. He turns to stand with his legs pressed together, hands covering his chest like a girl. You step up to him, let the edge of the tub press into your thighs. You lean over to press your lips to his sternum, starting at the manubrium, down to the body, then the xiphoid process. He shivers and wraps his arms around your neck. You turn your head to rest against his chest, rabbit heart against your ear just out of sync with your own.

Another: Regulus on his back, come spattered on his belly. Yours and his. Face red, utterly humiliated, he opens his dark eyes and reaches for you, reels you in. You don't like cuddling afterwards, but you let him anyway. You're allowed to cosset your younger siblings a bit. He coils his thin arms around you, whispers _yes_ and _thank you_ and wets your neck with tears.

Back on the rooftop, twenty years on, you can vividly recall his damp lips parted against your skin. Supplication.

The final memory is this: you and Regulus, on this very rooftop. The stillness of the summer night is like a portent. You're wearing a long coat with all your belongings charmed small to fit in the pockets, broomstick already in your hand. It's time.

Regulus stand a foot away from you.

"I don't want you to go," he says.

"I know," you say, because you've already talked about this and there's nothing more to say.

"I don't want you to leave." The _me_ is left unspoken.

"I wouldn't leave you if I could help it. Look, you could come with me. James wouldn't mind." You're not sure if that's entirely true, but you don't care. James would just have to accept it.

Regulus just looks at you, face scrunched up and sad. You both know he won't, but for a moment you wish so desperately that he _would_.

Wishing, wanting. That's always been your problem.

It's just past four am. Already the sun is just beginning to stretch out his long arms. It's time.

"I have to go," you say, and Regulus' face crumples further as if he's about to cry. "Look," you say, then stop because there's nothing you can say to make this better. "We'll still see each other," you try, and the words ring hollow because you already know, in the back of your mind, in the pit of your stomach, that you won't. You'll pass in the school corridors or at a Quidditch match and maybe your eyes will meet. But you will never see each other again.

The sky turns a little pinker, and in desperation you take a step forward and stoop to press a kiss into the corner of Regulus' mouth, soft and quick and full of all the things you can't say.

You reach the Potter house in a little under an hour. James, tired and ecstatic and sporting some truly magnificent bedhead welcomes you as his brother - but something in your mind lingers on the small, dark figure on that rooftop who has just lost his.

Twenty years on, you finally allow yourself to cry. All the things you forgot, all the smiles of all the people you knew - and Regulus, your brother who was dearer than a brother. How do you forget something like that? That's the true horror of Azkaban: when you forget everything but the bad, you forget that there was ever anything good.

Tomorrow, you will have to find a way of living in the present. You will again have to bury the Regulus you knew. But for tonight, you permit yourself the memory of the rabbit heart of a boy named for a lion's, beating steady against your cheek, just slightly out of sync with your own.


End file.
